Silvie Granatelli Workshop

Setting the Mood for Food - 2006

Silvie will explore her love of cooking, food, and finely-crafted porcelain pottery in this two day demonstration workshop. She will demonstrate a variety of thrown and altered forms that are meant to enhance the presentation of food and the environment of the dinner table. She will discuss how the importance of mood and atmosphere affect the design of her tableware.

Specific decorative techniques will include carving on leather hard clay, slip trailing, and stain decorating. Silvie encourages lively discussion of any topic related to clay, the studio, and the business of craft.

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Artist talk w/slides

August 18, 2006, 7:00 pm
Free to the public

Two day Workshop

Demonstration
August 19-20, 2006
10:00 am - 5:00 pm

This workshop has passed and is no longer available. Check out some of our Upcoming Workshops

Silvie Granatelli Artist Statement

Being a potter is the giving and receiving of thanks. My pottery is about food presentation. It is made to bring foods to light. While function is a primary consideration, mood is of greater importance. I try to create atmosphere with my tableware. Considerations about mood or atmosphere contribute to the overall look and feel of my pieces. Ideas come easily, but meaning seems to come in layers over decades of time. It is meaning that gives strength to good ideas. I hope that my ideas have grown with my skills.

I am concerned with ritual as well. Rituals uncover the basic values, aims and attitudes of a people. I am half Sicilian and half Cajun, whose cultures are wrought with superstitions. Throw in a Catholic upbringing and I have rituals dancing all about me. Cooking has given me an avenue to explore and create my personal rituals. I began to cook when I was a teenager, and it has been a strong, sustaining interest in my life.

Currently I am interested in the notions of hospitality. Hospitality, which means to give and to receive. I view pottery as a vehicle of hospitality, because a pot gives and receives simultaneously; it is both host and guest.

I think about things like:

Food- which foods are chosen from those available; how they are prepared; with whom, and when they are eaten; and how much time is allotted to cooking and eating. Food is one of the means by which society creates itself, and acts out its aims and functions.

How do I, as a maker of tableware, direct the theater of dining? This is where I believe I have some ability to give something to society. Here I become the host and the guest. By thinking about foods as identity, as our physical selves, as a way of thought, as sex, as power, as friendship, as a medium of magic and witchcraft, as our time controller, I see food as the root culture: that which gives meaning to our lives.

I hope my ideas about dining will shape and dramatize the rituals surrounding food. I want my tableware to embody the unspoken assumptions of my heritage and culture.

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Silvie Granatelli Workshop

Setting the Mood for Food - 2006

Silvie Granatelli Artist Statement

Silvie Granatelli Resume